mike james:
Even Wirth gave up on the "with" statement in his later languages design.
I think he was trying to remove all the not essential features from the design of its language, to produce something essential. I prefer a language that has more handy things, even if they are not strictly essential. Today we are still using ObjectPascal (FreePascal) while Oberon and the like are uncommon.
Bye, bearophile